554
PARTISAN REVIEW
-Three:
It
appears on no map, but can be referred to by citing the
intersection of two lines, the one drawn from Ulan Bator
to
Taipei, the
other from Seoul to Bangkok, which sets it firmly in the People's
Republic of China, where of course it is not. But no matter, no one has
any right
to
know where it is, just as no one has any right to expect that
guide books should always be accurate.
So far, so obtuse. Worse follows.
-Four: American SR-71 reconnaissance jets, taking off from the
Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa and streaking across the Chinese
mainland at eighty thousand feet or higher, have actually photo–
graphed it as something it is not, it therefore being regarded as a secret
installation worthy of a place on the Strategic Air Command's map of
imperative targets.
o surprise
to
me: air forces have to do
something,
after all.
-Five: What is being manufactured there is, according to in–
formed sources,
Strch prst skrz krk,
a Czech war gas which fatally gives
the victim the sensation of having an enormous finger rammed down
his throat. He then vomits up most of his intestines.
-Look here, I say
to
Handy Man: Don't give me that Intourist
shit, give me the real shit.
If
I'm going to see this place, whose existence
appears at best to be dubious, then kindly provide me with some
noncriteria to eschew judging it by, lest I commit myself to some
xenophobic nonjudgment.
-Dig, he smirks. It all depends, which is what the hanging man
says to Damocles (we have universities in the U.S.S.R., whatever your
counter-propaganda tells you, and our literature has wit). You must
think of it in this way. Here, I'll draw it on the back of this envelope,
thus attracting your attention to the address on the front, which of
course is bogus. Let i stand for insider, a for outsider, you and I
respectively, and
K
for the Kremlin, which is all sides. Now: first we
have i's view of
K
and a's view of
K.
OK? Then we have
i's
view of a's
view of
K
and, it follows quite naturally, a's view of i's view of o's view
of
K,
inevitably to be followed by what I will abbreviate as
K ----
(0 ---
(i ---
(0 ---
K), which is all important, whereas what I
will abbreviate as
0---
(K ---
(0 ---
(i ---
(0 ---
K)
is almost as unimportant as
i ---
(K --- (0 ---
(i ---
(0 --- K).
Simple once you've mastered it. Another way of expressing this is as
follows:
KoioK
+
or - oKoioK
+
iKoioK
=
Koiok.
